'We need cricket not to be concentrated in the hands of a few people. We need cricket to be egalitarian, we need it to be all over the place.'
The legendary Rahul Dravid credited Indian cricket's rise into an extremely powerful force due to the growing talent pool which extends to even the remotest corners of the country.
Dravid, who masterminded India's triumph in the T20 World Cup earlier this year, claimed a strong club cricket culture has a lot to do in breaking the long-standing trend of city cricketers dominating the passage to the national team.
"If you look at Indian cricket today, Indian cricket is extremely strong, it's extremely powerful. One of the big reasons for that is that talent comes from everywhere, from all over the country," said Dravid during the 50th year celebration of Mount Joy Cricket Club, in Bengaluru, on Sunday.
"I think if you go back to the time of say G R (Gundappa) Vishwanath or even when I was starting out my career, most of the talent came from the big cities or from few other states.
"Even if they were talented boys in smaller places, they had to come to the big cities to play cricket. But today I think you see in Indian cricket that boys are coming from everywhere," he added.
Dravid said the standards of domestic cricket in India has improved vastly and no team can be taken for granted.
"You just look at the standard of the Ranji Trophy. In the old days when you played in the South Zone, other than playing Hyderabad or Tamil Nadu, I think it is fair to say, without being disrespectful, that a lot of other teams you could take it not for granted but you could certainly take it a little bit more lightly.
"I don't think there is any team in the South Zone today that you can walk in and say that you will comfortably beat," he added.
Hailing the club cricket structure in the country, particularly in Karnataka, Dravid said the system has allowed the sport to remain accessible to all.
"We need clubs to be strong. We need cricket not to be concentrated in the hands of a few people. We need cricket to be egalitarian, we need it to be all over the place.
"You cannot have talent or you cannot have facilities concentrated only in one or two places. To get the best out of talent, we need to ensure that young boys and girls are getting access to good infrastructure in every part," he noted.
The 51-year-old former Indian captain then briefly revisited his club career when he was young to underscore the need for that system to thrive.
"After the practice, HAL (Hindustan Aeronautics Limited) would give us two eggs and one small glass of milk. I would always stay back for that glass of milk and those eggs. Not because I wanted the milk and eggs.
"But because I wanted to sit and listen to the likes of BK Kumar or Nandan talking about cricket. And it used to be great fun to listen to them and learn so much from them," said Dravid.
